I think he means the former. It's both a mercy and a cruelty of our nature. A mercy in that we don't feel death, we as we are won't have to suffer that exact moment, we grasp in desperation for what we need and what we love as a reflex and maybe we come out the other end alive and wake up to ourselves or maybe we die as that Shattered Animal. A cruelty in that we're gone. It's pieces of us but not us. Our memories, our attachments, our bodies, but not our conscious selves. I've only really experienced it once, that autopilot of Id to take care of yourself when faced with a moment so awful nothing will ever be the same. It takes so long to piece yourself back together, but pieces inevitably remain lost.

@zeroanonymity9736 I appreciate what you're saying. And I'm sorry you've had to live through an experience like that. I guess the only thing that still trips me up is the description of being "maybe bored that you don't have a plate of food in front of you". I've seen panicked dissociation and things adjacent to it, but even as a therapist I've never even heard a story of... I guess it'd be Reaction Formation in response to a presently ongoing trauma? Still, I mostly agree, it's just that thorn in my brain that keeps me wondering.

@@TheStrix Maybe... it's that lingering dissociation? You've shattered, you're out of the moment of stress that's made you a Shattered Animal, but you're still in that mindset. Going through motions, tolerating the situation that's making us hurt or uncomfortable because it's seemingly the only choice we have ("...sit uncomfortable in that uncomfortable chair."), and the only thing that's registering to us is that lack of sustenance that we don't need but want just to alleviate the ennui of it all ("...bored that you don't have a plate of food in front of you to eat..."). Reaction Formation doesn't feel right to me, because instead of taking an action that opposes our feelings it's like our existence simplifies. Do you remember what it's like being a small child? You think, you want, you express pain or pleasure, but there's no seemingly no guiding ego to it or else just the wisps and beginnings of one. If being a Shattering Animal is what I think it is, it's reverting back to that. I appreciate those kind words, and thankfully yeah I'm doing much better. Even if you lose pieces in the reforming, time and experience allows you to grow. You might be less or more malformed than you would be if the shattering never happened, but you're still so much more than you were before.

That's what it looked like in the thumbnail

Yeah, because Gunbuster was a prototype and thus over engineered.